ABrockwell @aebrockwell@social.cleverlibre.org

“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

This comes from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve loved it for 20 years and you might too.

“I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “Okay, I’ll send you the pages.”

Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, “Where are you going?” “Well,” I say, “I’m going to buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet.” And I say, “Hush.”

So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately.

I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it.

Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home.

And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/we-are-here-on-earth-to-fart-around-and-dont-let-anybody-tell-you-any-different/

@alaric

#ChatGPT #OpenAI

Another good piece here by Dr.Linda Mciver, the Executive Director of the Australian Data Science Education Institute, about not falling for the "AI" hype being pushed by the tech bros especially OpenAI calling their generative models "Artificial General Intelligence" or the other bros warning about "AI becoming sentient" 👇🏾

https://adsei.org/2023/03/12/theres-no-such-thing-as-artificial-intelligence/?amp=1

You know what's taboo, @nytimes? Fomenting discontent among members of the white nationalist militia movement and sending disgruntled thugs to the Capitol to interfere in the election certification process. But, go ahead, tell us more about how the rule of men takes precedence over the rule of law. #democracy #politics #Trump #indictment

👏👏👏
---
RT @davidfrum
Point of clarification, it's a banana republic when the president of the state commits crimes and DOESN'T face justice.
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1641623732073426946

If you make a dad joke without being a father are you a faux pa?

Journalists, PLEASE put Trump indictment in its proper context:

It wasn't just a payoff to stop something sleazy from becoming public.

The reason they were so keen to keep it secret was to win a presidential election.

That is the issue: This was gross interference with a presidential election -- and it worked.

Keep this in mind when someone tries to say the American GOP deserves to 'have their say' and be heard as a rational choice. I defy that person to find the logic in the following:

In Missouri, a 14-year-old is too young to:

1. Vote
2. Drink
3.. Drive
4. See an 'R' rated movie without an adult.

But that same 14-year-old can:

1. Openly carry a firearm in the streets.
2. Be forced to give birth

Some things can't and shouldn't be both-sided.

I posted a trascript of my conversation with ChatGPT, the best conversation anyone will ever have with an AI. https://smaldino.com/wp/how-many-potatoes-could-fit-in-a-pair-of-pants/

Let 2023 be the year of accountability.

WE DID IT! The Texas Observer will remain open!

Our board just voted to rescind both the layoffs and the closure. We'll have more news soon, but we believe this is the start of a very positive transformation at our publication—and you were a huge part of it. THANK YOU! You proved to the world that #TexasNeedsAnObserver!

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-observer-no-layoffs-remains-open-board-vote/

#Fediverse #Mastodon #WeWin

I love how Barnes & Noble specifically promoted some of these "banned" books. Every library and bookstore should do this.

#fascism #books #ChildrensBooks #BookBanning #FightFascism

Now that ChatGPT had made solutions cheap, and disincentivized problem solving and creativity, how will we cultivate original thought?

Asimov dramatized the question in his novella Profession

https://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html

#ChatGPT #creativity #education #Asimov

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
~ Isaac Asimov

Elon Musk seems relentlessly, comically hellbent to prove my point on the Myth of the Secret Genius. https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-secret-genius

A photographer took a picture just as this couple threw ashes into a river.
He asked who it was.
As they answered their dog.
The photographer asked for permission to edit their photo and this was the result.

My colleague and coauthor Jevin West has been warning me for years about the mess that we would face as #GPT and other text-based generative AI matured.

I was not sufficiently concerned.

I just realized why.

I thought of them as tools for deception, and while they offered some advantages for creating disinformation at scale, human beings are quite adapt at creating bullshit on their own.

What I missed was that people would WANT to consult them, knowingly, despite all their issues.

Most folks I know who are worried about AI aren’t worried about these programs becoming self aware and oppressing us. That’s not a thing. We’re worried about all the ways these systems will ramp up existing inequalities and further obliterate our shared reality as human beings. That’s already happening.

Americans Tommie Smith (center) and and John Carlos (rear), and Australian Peter Norman (front) during the medal ceremony for the 200m dash at the 1968 Olympic games.

National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC.

'I have long argued that fact-checking is anachronistic and should be abolished in favor of much more aggressive reality-checking and gaslight-fighting in the main news columns.'

“Fact-checking” is a feeble, inadequate way to respond to racist, antisemitic incitement

https://presswatchers.org/2023/03/fact-checking-is-a-feeble-inadequate-way-to-respond-to-racist-antisemitic-incitement/